Technical Field
The present invention relates to a memory management method, and more particularly, relates to a memory management method, a memory control circuit unit and a memory storage device for a rewritable non-volatile memory module.
Description of Related Art
The markets of digital cameras, cellular phones, and MP3 players have expanded rapidly in recent years, resulting in escalated demand for storage media by consumers. The characteristics of data non-volatility, low power consumption, and compact size make a rewritable non-volatile memory module (e.g., a flash memory) ideal to be built in the portable multi-media devices as cited above.
Generally, the rewritable non-volatile memory module is controlled by one memory control circuit unit. The memory control circuit unit can receive data from a host system, and write the data into the rewritable non-volatile memory module. In certain configurations, the rewritable non-volatile memory module has a plurality of planes, and each of the planes includes a plurality of physical erasing units. The memory control circuit unit can configure the physical erasing units belonging to different planes as the same super physical unit, and the memory control circuit unit can program the physical erasing units in the same super physical unit alternately or simultaneously. Accordingly, a speed for writing data into the rewritable non-volatile memory module may be increased when what issued by the host system is the sequential data.
However, each plane of the rewritable non-volatile memory module may include good physical erasing units and bad physical erasing units, and yet the memory control circuit unit may only use the good physical erasing units in each plane to configure the super physical unit. If each plane includes a different number of the bad physical erasing units, each plane will then include an unequal number of the good physical erasing units. Under such circumstance, remaining good physical erasing units that may not be configured as the super physical unit will exist in the plane having more good physical erasing units to thereby influence the size of the actual usable storage space. Therefore, it has become one of the major subjects for person skilled in the art as how to fully utilize the good physical erasing units to configure the super physical unit in order to improve usage rate of the physical erasing units.
Nothing herein should be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art of any portion of the present invention. Furthermore, citation or identification of any document in this application is not an admission that such document is available as prior art to the present invention, or that any reference forms a part of the common general knowledge in the art.